Story Telling Workshop

Story Telling Workshop

Pravah Jaipur Initiative organized a 3-day workhop (June 7,2011 – June 9, 2011) for the members of PJI’s Critical Video Unit (CVU) and youth interested for film making internship. This was to improve the writing skill in script writing and story telling.

Mr. Manak Matiyani, trainer for this workshop, from Commutiny Media, New Delhi, was really inspiring. He shared his knowledge and taught the skill of writing to the volunteers through simple examples such as the popular story of “the Hare and The Tortoise” and experiences makes it easier for the volunteers to understand.

The concept was explained through interesting mediums like graphs, presentations, video screenings, discussions, etc. A very important concept of story mapping was taught by a powerpoint template of a graph to show where a story needs to have a point of interest.

Through traditional and popular stories volunteers identified the essential elements of story such as Plot, Conflict, Climax, Resolution, etc. The symbolic ability of a story and its perspective as one way of telling stories differently gives a different identity to a story. On the first day, a group activity of innovation on a film was done and all the volunteers enjoyed it fully by making a remake of “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” to a hilarious movie “Dilwale Dulhe le Jayege” in a proper structure giving it a new look.

Everyone shared their individual stories looking at innovative ways of telling and structuring. A very essential 3-Art Structure of scripting was explained by looking at the structure of a popular bollywood film “Sholay” and 3-Act Division, Plot points, teaser and tag was taken in detail and the volunteers learned breaking up the story to organize their ideas and follow a simple structure and identified transitions, symbolism, visual and audio elements and layering by looking at some short videos and discussing on it.

Had screenings of PJI short film and identified the 3 act structure. Also seen and discussed movies which do not follow this structure, knowing when and why you are breaking the rule and innovations on the three acts.

As PJI always works on youth development and talks about social issues, a concept of social cinema i.e. messaging through movies on social issues was taken deeply by taking cues from advertising of Jagori’s, MustBol, Indian Railway, etc. After discussing upon these, volunteers learnt that a target audience need to be defined with tone, plot, narrative style. A story with a emotional and personal connect is more effective in conveying a message.

Manak, the mentor also tried to meet the expextations of our volunteers and explained the differentiated the concept of story, script, screenplay and story board. The feedback of the volunteers for the workshop was very positive. “I had so much many stories in my mind but never knew how to express it effectively. Now I can write it in an interesting way” said Mohammad Khalil. “After this workshop I know how a social issue can be shown in an appealing and interesting manner” added Abhishek Chawariya. - Kritika Shukla